Crimean-Ottoman Factor in the Socio-Cultural System of Russia in Early Modern Times

Abstract

Abstract: The article gives a description of the sociocultural organization of Russia and the peculiarities of its geopolitical position in the system of international relations of the early modern period. Questions were raised about the reasons for the rapid territorial expansion of the Russian state in the second half of the 15-17 centuries, as well as its high competitiveness in foreign policy both in relations with its western neighbors and in the eastern direction.

For the states of Western Europe with the beginning of their modernization, modern age has come, however “Muscovy” in the 15-17 centuries remained a medieval country. At the same time, it not only did not share the fate of many eastern powers with a traditional way, which turned into the 17th-19th centuries in the colony and semi-colony, but also, on the contrary, it led a successful colonial expansion and demonstrated externally the almost synchronous trends in state building that were inherent in the Western European countries.

The author believes that the patrimonial structure of the sociocultural system of the Russian state in the 15-17 centuries contributed to the mobilization of internal material and human resources, coupled with an early superficial “Europeanization” (regular borrowing the military, technical, and cultural experience of modernizing Western Europe), ensured Russia's competitiveness in the world. Since the emergence of the united Moscow state, Russia has developed as a land empire.

However, the strategic national task of Russia was not to preserve the medieval patrimony, but to create the prerequisites for its modernization. Amid the socio-economic development, which is characteristic of all countries with a patrimonial structure, that could have started only by transferring the center of Russian extensive agriculture to the southern fertile lands. This would free part of the population of the non-chernozem center for trade and industrial activities. But the transfer of the agrarian center to the south was restrained by the constant military danger from the Wild Field, which was part of the Horde, and then the Crimean Khanate, backed until the end of the 18 century by the Ottoman Empire, perceiving the Black Sea with its “inland lake”. As a result, the struggle for the Black Sea and Crimea to become a part of Russia, as well as the overcoming the patrimonial order, becomes a matter of civilizational success or failure of Russia in the context of world history.